How to get an album released

These days, there are
many ways to release an album. The simplest is to stand in front of
a laptop, sing into the camera and upload to YouTube. My band,
Clock Opera, have taken a longer route: our debut album, Ways
To Forget, was released in April by Moshi Moshi/Island
Records after a gestation period of three years. We plan to be
quicker next time, but other than a bit of help with mixing
and recording drums, we made the whole thing ourselves.

In the beginning, I recorded my ideas in a
small bedroom in London, a microphone balanced on a sewing desk and
instruments found in skips. This isn't a sob story, but a tale of
humble beginnings: a lot of the original recordings are on the
album. Great albums can now be recorded for next to nothing. XL
Recordings has a small studio in a converted garage, which gave
rise to the debut album from the XX.

The requirements to make an album to a
reasonable recording standard are a half-decent microphone and a
laptop. Damon Albarn reportedly recorded his Gorillaz album The Fall entirely
on his iPad. The Korg iPad app (£22.99)
sounds like a synth that would have cost thousands a few years ago.
I predict that voice-activated, tablet-recorded albums stored on
cloud-based memory will be commonplace in the near future.
I've used Logic software for long enough to work fast, which is
crucial. If an idea is held up by having to figure out which
button to press, frustration will wipe out your momentum. Find a
method that enhances your ideas. If a Dictaphone is your thing then
stick to that.

Maintain a healthy disregard for the
sanctity of the recording process. Producer Dave McCracken told me
that having recorded an orchestra in an expensive studio for an Ian
Brown track, it was only when he put it through a cheap distortion
effect that it sounded right. Follow your ears: trust what sounds
good to you, not what you're meant to do.

With a very small amount of equipment and
technical knowledge, if you have the ideas and drive, then all
you require to make your album are space and time.

As space can be pretty much anywhere, time
may be the limiting factor. Warn those around you of long,
irregular hours as this can take its toll. Keep one eye on what you
are prepared to sacrifice, unless you plan your next album
to involve heartbreak.

So how do you release your new album?

The flipside to the explosion in recording
opportunity is that, with so many more albums out there, you have
to fight harder to be heard. Stories of how social networking can
trigger an unstoppable democratic reaction to an
artist, propelling them into mass exposure, are largely myths.
Great albums are forgotten every day - make sure yours isn't
one of them.

Don't rush into choosing people around you.
There are a lot of good managers, lawyers, labels and promoters
among the sharks. You could represent yourself but that's all time
spent away from making the music, so find the right balance.

Assuming stubbornness, perseverance and
an ability to ignore risk (all essential traits), what do you
do that no one else does? For us, remixing has been a big help. At
the same time as blogs started creating a buzz for us, I started
remixing other artists and this led to offers of support shows.
Along the way we gained more online support, released a few singles
through record labels of growing reputation, gathered momentum
through live shows and trickled on to the radio. It's been a
lot of hard work, but we've got an album out, we're proud of it and
we did it our way.